Well, I am very tired now! It must be midnight here and I need to work tomorrow morning. Here are my vacation ramblings . . .

Romantic love, that infatuation which on average lasts two years, is selfish isn’t it? It is all about your needs being satisfied and the person who is able to accomplish such a thing is the one we call our love. Our love is really the one who best makes a god of us, isn’t it? These are cynical words for me . . . totally not my style!

I was thinking about why you like the night so much and the moonlight in particular. (I got that from your autobiography.) The moonlight casts shadows and makes things appear differently than what they would in the daylight. The night makes us question what we know is truth by daylight. The night is full of illusions.

My hour is daybreak, when the light dispels the darkness and I can see what is before me. Just remember who the author of confusion is, who cast the first doubt, whose dwelling place is darkness. God is calling us into the light.

So opposite are we, yet similar. God gave us different eyes and minds, your view truly fascinates me and makes me think. I do surround myself with friends whose views are similar to mine. You are a splash of cold water to my comfortable face. Well, you’re also a drink of cold water too!

When we were in NYC last year we visited ground zero. This time I was impressed by the view from below. The buildings surrounding the site were draped in black cloth, like tall ladies in mourning. As we drew closer, out of the empty pit rose the cross of steel beams. I am sure you have seen pictures of it. It looked so strong and alone standing there. The occurrences of 9/11 always remind me of Revelation Chapter 18. NYC is the most sinful place I have ever been.

One other thing . . . you mentioned your “buttons.” Could you tell me what they are? I wouldn’t want to push them by mistake . . . then again, maybe I already have.

That is enough of me tonight!

Your thoughts are of interest to me. I have a few thoughts that occurred to me quite readily, however. I’ll start backward and work up: as to my buttons, they are not easy to push. The biggest thing that can set them off unexpectedly is when I have the perception (whether warranted or not) that someone is toying with me, playing me for a fool and/or when someone will not even consider what I have to say, walling me out. In both cases, it is only intimates that truly get to me: people in whom I have a deeply vested interest staked. I cannot foresee you ever pushing my buttons: very few people can or do. Ironically, it occurs mostly in romantic relationships: ironic because it demonstrates the selfishness of which you speak. I understand and believe fully what you say there, even if you are being unusually cynical for your normal self.

But the one thought I felt I “must” defend was my love of moonlight. (I’m teasing, of course, as though one’s favorite time of day were an earth shattering issue.) I would recast my perception of the night—especially the moonlit countryside—like this: it is magical, enchanted. It is mysterious, feminine, graceful, subtle, soothing, though wild, yes, and dangerous. The night is beautiful, tranquil, yet it reminds me that danger is always a part of life—that the deepest pleasures always contain the element of danger—for the man who enjoys much, risks much as well. Our Lord often spoke of such things, noting that there are many things in life that are costly affairs, and dangerous, but always worth the risk, worth selling all one has to obtain (perhaps He didn’t have the nighttime in mind, however). :) I am at home in the night. But this is not the night of the city where people lurk in the shadows and neon signs sell their wares to unwary passers-by. This is the night as God intended: the moonlight over the riverbank, casting its silver glow for miles and miles of fields and farms, looking like a lake made of land: a lake of silver, tranquil, rippleless. This is a time of strange uninhibition for me. Is it a time for illusions? You could perceive it that way, I suppose. But to me, it is a time of transformations: when the moonlight bathes the landscape in the magic and wonder of eternity beyond. It transcends the material world for me, where beauty transforms even the most unlikely objects into otherworldly wonders of awe and delight.

So now that I have tried to poetically describe it to you, let me just say that really, I suppose, it is the fact that to me the countryside at night is strangely beautiful and appeals to this sense. It tends to bring out the poetic in me and a sense of the childlike. Do you find it strange that such a primitive moment could so connect me to realms beyond? Didn’t someone once describe the moon and night as a water symbol? Maybe this is the cold water in your face . . . am I in your face? No, no. I am just playing: I can be incredibly playful at times, deceptively so, because my humor is always so dry. Those uninitiated often think I am being serious when I am being facetious: I especially like irony. In fact, my description of the night was framed as a playful defiance to what you said, though, of course, it is obvious I do like the night. Actually, as I think about it, it is more to help you understand me and why I like the night, not so much to “change” you or “defy” you. (Heh heh.) I guess, to be totally serious, the night represents to me: 1. wonder, 2. beauty, 3. ecstatic joy, 4. mystery, and 5. a connection to my childhood roots. But I agree with you. I like the sunshine. (Maybe not daybreak though because I go to bed too late . . .) I love nature period. The night is just one of many moments I enjoy: it is the magic of childhood, but the period of adulthood and maturity, as you suggest, must be lived in the sunlight where childish daydreams and fancies give way to the warmth and beauty of the Son.

I had best get my butt off to work. I am late, late for an important date, said the white rabbit. But before I go, let me take one last swipe at the moonlight thing, and let Nathaniel Hawthorn, the great American literary author, describe it from an excerpt from his introduction to The Scarlet Letter. (This title may also be read online at Bartleby.com.) The year is 1850. He writes:

[Bemoaning his present lack of creativity and inability to write:] It was not merely during the three hours and a half which Uncle Sam claimed as his share of my daily life, that this wretched numbness held possession of me. It went with me on my sea-shore walks and rambles into the country, whenever—which was seldom and reluctantly—I bestirred myself to seek that invigorating charm of Nature, which used to give me such freshness and activity of thought, the moment that I stepped across the threshold of the Old Manse. The same torpor, as regarded the capacity for intellectual effort, accompanied me home, and weighed upon me, in the chamber which I most absurdly termed my study. Nor did it quit me when, late at night, I sat in the deserted parlour, lighted only by the glimmering coal-fire and the moon, striving to picture forth imaginary scenes, which, the next day, might flow out on the brightening page in many-hued description.

If the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an hour, it might well be deemed a hopeless case. Moonlight, in a familiar room, falling so white upon the carpet, and showing all its figures so distinctly,—making every object so minutely visible, yet so unlike a morning or noontide visibility,—is a medium the most suitable for a romance-writer to get acquainted with his illusive guests. There is the little domestic scenery of the well-known apartment; the chairs, with each its separate individuality; the centre-table, sustaining a work-basket, a volume or two, and an extinguished lamp; the sofa; the book-case; the picture on the wall;—all these details, so completely seen, are so spiritualized by the unusual light, that they seem to lose their actual substance, and become things of intellect. Nothing is too small or too trifling to undergo this change, and acquire dignity thereby. A child’s shoe; the doll, seated in her little wicker carriage; the hobby-horse;—whatever, in a word, has been used or played with, during the day, is now invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present as by daylight. Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar room has become a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other. Ghosts might enter here, without affrighting us. It would be too much in keeping with the scene to excite surprise, were we to look about us and discover a form, beloved, but gone hence, now sitting quietly in a streak of this magic moonshine, with an aspect that would make us doubt whether it had returned from afar, or had never once stirred from our fireside.

The somewhat dim coal-fire has an essential influence in producing the effect which I would describe. It throws its unobtrusive tinge throughout the room, with a faint ruddiness upon the walls and ceiling, and a reflected gleam from the polish of the furniture. This warmer light mingles itself with the cold spirituality of the moonbeams, and communicates, as it were, a heart and sensibilities of human tenderness to the forms which fancy summons up. It converts them from snow-images into men and women. Glancing at the looking-glass, we behold—deep within its haunted verge—the smouldering glow of the half-extinguished anthracite, the white moonbeams on the floor, and a repetition of all the gleam and shadow of the picture, with one remove farther from the actual, and nearer to the imaginative. Then, at such an hour, and with this scene before him, if a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.

But, for myself, during the whole of my Custom-House experience, moonlight and sunshine, and the glow of fire-light, were just alike in my regard; and neither of them was of one whit more avail than the twinkle of a tallow-candle. An entire class of susceptibilities, and a gift connected with them,—of no great richness or value, but the best I had,—was gone from me.

And now I echo your words. “Enough of me for now.” :p (You do know this is me sticking my tongue out at you, didn’t you?) :) Good day.

Maybe I am simple minded, but I see truth in all things no matter how small or insignificant they might seem. “Light and darkness” is a biggie for me. While I understand your appreciation of the beauty of the evening, I look deeply into all things searching out His truth. Simple, yes, I am very simple. But I feel His presence, understand His words and wisdom when I am simple.

PS I wasn’t trying to pick a fight or degrade you in any way. You know that, right?

No, I am not offended. :) As to light and darkness though, I look at these as metaphorical. Everything that exists was created by God and at least was beautiful in its own time: even the devil himself. What makes the difference between good and evil is the conscious choice of a sentient being. Any material thing is neither good nor evil, though it can become an instrument employed toward good or evil in the hands of a sentient being. You may wield a scalpel for healing though a thug may wield it toward death. The reason darkness is described as a metaphor for evil has two related meanings, as I see it: when it is dark, we cannot see with our eyes, hence we stumble (without God, we walk around disconnected from our true Source and purpose) and it is easy to hide evil deeds in the dark because light is the presence of energy, darkness is merely the absence of light: we can hide the things we do not want others to know about when no one can see us do them. Yet all that God creates is good: the sun or the moon and stars: each was created to give light in the darkness so that men might see. As to the darkness, it is not itself evil, it is simply the lack of energy: the physical space required to contain light, I guess you could say. So yes, evil is usually secretive and in the dark it is easier to hide. Yet what existed before the creation of light? Did darkness? Did anything other than God?

One last thing: the underlying philosophy behind all of what I have said is once again this idea that the world is not sacred versus secular, saintly versus “sinnerly,” so much as in the process of being redeemed and still in need of redemption. All created things are good in themselves: it the choices of sentient beings to disobey God and turn their back on Him that creates evil: it is the man who worships himself rather than his Maker. By the way, a long time ago you asked where the idea of sacred versus secular came from: Loyal [my Sunday school “facilitator” during this time period who first introduced the idea to me] found an occurrence of it he likes to quote from the Ecclesia Church in Houston, Texas. Just go to Ecclesia and click on the word “Struggle,” to see this statement in formal print. Each word offers a thought provoking idea. (Archive Note: While Ecclesia is still a valid church with an online presence, the site has been modified at least since I checked it on January 5, 2004, nullifying the previous two sentences.) I need to run, run, run. I have class in three minutes by my computer clock.

Yes, I do understand metaphors.

One more simple-minded note on this topic . . .

I also understand that for some unknown reason God created the night. But He created us to LIVE during the day. We were made to sleep (the nearest thing we know to death) at night. Everything for a purpose.

[No comment. There was apparently a lost e-mail in which I said I needed to get some schoolwork done.]

I know you are trying to work, but I had one more thought on darkness. We had our home bible study tonight and I always feel His presence when we are gathered. What I began to understand was that God created everything for us. God created the darkness of the night knowing beforehand He would use it to teach us. So He did create the darkness and the night that contains it for purpose. He could very easily have made the world function without darkness, couldn’t He? But it is so meaningful to us and so powerful because of the great contrast between the two. Then He explains the darkness and the light time and time again in the bible. I pay close attention to that which He repeats over and over again because I know I can be a stubborn learner. And doesn’t He know that about me too?

I think too much. I should go wax the kitchen floor now.

You should go wax the kitchen floor, huh? No, I got two pages done on my argument paper. I only need four. It is really kind of fun: I can turn the fifty thousand doubts that plague my mind at any given moment loose on any unsuspecting victim I choose. It is so much easier to tear down than build up again, and to effectively argue, often all that is needed is the introduction of a margin of doubt. Doubt and I are bedfellows, so introducing a margin of doubt is as natural as breathing. However, in real life, I don’t like to argue unless I really have good reason. I am much more likely to seek reconciliation and commonalties: to seek to unify seemingly opposing viewpoints. But with this assignment, we are analyzing a literary analysis of an evolutionary paper written by Gould and Lewotin. Perhaps these names ring bells with your scientific background? Anyway, we are arguing about the arguments of the people who are arguing about how evolutionists argue. So, I step in and blast away, paragraph after paragraph of diabolical doubt slicing through until nothing is left except doubt.

Yet doubt can be an effective tool to teach us what we really believe. When we doubt, we question. When we question, we examine closely and carefully. When we examine closely and carefully, we find that we learn things.

Now then, about this darkness: yes, I too had similar thoughts today arriving at some very similar conclusions. I thought of the marvelous illustrations drawn from the physical world to demonstrate tangibly the world to come. I thought how all things emanate from the spiritual world. Then I thought of Sandra’s post and reeled in my thoughts on all emanating from the spiritual to my own modified version of the same. God made all, yet He Himself is not all (or, more to the point, all is not Him), though He inhabits all, being omnipresent.

I also thought of an article I once read some time ago on Lambert Dolpin’s website that stuck with me. Dolphin is a retired physicist who has a huge Christian site: looking for an article on his site is like looking for a needle in a haystack, as the old saw goes, even when you do know what you are looking for, which I don’t . . . it has been too long. I’m tracking down the link now . . . Okay found it . . . that was fast, huh? (Actually, it took me about three minutes. I would have been sunk had it not been for the fact I had a copy saved in my own files to compare.) It is entitled “What Holds the Universe Together?” You may not see the connection to the light/dark discussion and that is okay: I have not reread it and I can’t remember for sure why it tied in either, though it does somehow, at least to me. Okay, I remember now: it ties in because it suggests that before the physical was the spiritual: that the spiritual is the “more real” and sustains and undergirds the physical. This same concept appears in occultic philosophy as well, though not all occultic ideas are wrong: just their final conclusions. However, if you read this sprawling article—which you may or may not accept on every level, I don’t agree with all of Dolphin’s conclusions—it should max out that “thinking too much” aspect you describe. Indeed, you’ll definitely need to go wax several kitchen floors after that one! :) At any rate, don’t read it if you don’t feel like thinking. And now, with this break from my homework, I will return to it again. This time, however, I think I will merely read some out of my textbook and save the balance of the literary argument—on intertextual analysis no less—for later.

Now this paper I would LOVE to proofread . . . for typos only! I have not heard of the two people you mentioned, or if I have, it’s an unretrievable memory. [Note from Eric: This paper was a draft designed as one of four that would coalesce into a single final term paper. The end result was entitled The Rhetorical Framework of Scientific Prose: A Discursive Examination and can be read on this site. Be forewarned, it is rather technical.]

You are likely not a mind reader, so I need to fill you in on the gaps in my thought, I suppose. I just realized I had not tied the threads together for you to see inside my own mind. Here it goes. Assuming that the spiritual emanates the physical, just as the sun emits rays of energy (the Son emits rays of energy?), we would expect our physical world to be created as a picture and manifestation of the spiritual world. Concepts like light and dark offer profound ways we can conceptualize and understand the unseen spiritual world that supports and sustains this physical world in which we live. I do not remember all my thoughts on the nature of light and dark now, but the implications were profound and I had much fertile thought as a direct result. However, one thing to catch you up to speed is an extract from my newsletter Frank Laubach: Modern Christian Mystic:

What I have chosen to send today may sound a little strange to our modern ears. We have a tendency to seek God in the fireworks and impressive displays of power, turning away in disappointment when we don’t find Him there. This has much to with the fact we have not cultivated the ability to listen to His still, small voice. Why is God so difficult to hear?

God’s ways are not our ways. God is a totally sinless, holy, and faultless being who is completely righteous, blemishless, and just: the height of perfection and flawlessness—there is not one single human being who measures up to this standard of absolute purity. God is goodness exemplified: “God is light. In Him there is no darkness at all.” We, on the other hand, often choke out the voice of God with our own insistence that things be done our way; our own pettiness, selfishness, sinfulness, naïveté, and greed put barriers between us and the Father. We expect to find God in awesome spectacles of might and miraculous messages without first learning to recognize Him in the smile of a child or the everyday miracles of nature around us. Further, when we live in sin, rebellion, and stubborn pride, we effectively silence that still, small voice, for our ways are not the ways of God and our inner attitudes and motives take us out of alignment with Him.

It is true that in order for God the Father to speak to us, He must be the one who does the speaking. Yet it is clear He is continually speaking to people all the time: they have just never learned how to listen. Just as the Jews rejected Jesus, thinking that the Messiah would be a great military conqueror, crushing all their foes, so too our misconceptions of a perfect God fall pathetically short of the mark. On His own accord and when it is needful, He will avenge, but for the time, that is not how He has chosen to woo all men unto Himself. He has chosen a path that is higher, a path we do not often see, for it is so foreign to our ancestry, the blood of Adam and Eve still freely coursing through our veins all these untold centuries later. How could we know what we have never known, recognize what we have never seen? But perhaps someone could at least help us know how to look? Indeed, someone already has, though what they have left us between the covers of that well-known book is often scorned and despised, subjected to the same skepticism that effectively clouds us from being able to discover anything pure or worthwhile.

Kierkegaard, ever the existentialist, expresses some interesting sentiments on this subject. He sees a person’s “concentric,” inward journey as rising from a reliance on the sensual word, to the use of “sensate language appropriated metaphorically for spiritual use” to take us toward the Center (Creegan—“Spiritual Metaphor in ‘Love Builds Up’”). Indeed, everything that we know is built upon what we have encountered once we entered this world. This is common sense, really. We were born into a world that contained trees and flowers and butterflies; we learned to accept these things as a given and elementary part of our existence, our language mirroring—even presupposing—their existence, and these things with their linguistic counterparts in turn become the basis for all our ideas: we have taken the very foundation for all our sensate knowledge for granted since the day we were born and do not question its right to exist. When we learn new things, we necessarily build them on this ever expanding foundation of the old, the vast majority of teaching done through analogy and metaphor, relating two or more somewhat dissimilar things in order to explain a third and higher concept, just as all our understanding is based on the early years of simply soaking up and apprehending everything with which our senses were presented without question of validity. It was all built on the foundation of taking the world into which we were born as a given from our birth and building on what is—not what was not.

From this rationale, Kierkegaard’s conception of “concentric” stages (though not strictly linear: more dynamic and malleable as they ring the center) makes perfect sense, for we grow from a being immersed in the sensual world to one capable of integrating the spiritual as well, through the stepping stone of the symbols of the sensual, no less. This lack of integration is often apparent in the lower maturity level of the skeptic, who has not yet learned to apprehend the unseen spiritual dimension—the higher and more central levels of reality. Stuck in the sensual world, their materialistic presuppositions, when applied to the same knowledge the believer’s faith embarks upon, blinds them to the reality of the love woven within. Hence, it is not the knowledge itself, but the approach or “tool” applied to that knowledge that determines the validity of the outcome. Fear, foolish pride, or limiting suppositions holding them back, they have not yet learned to venture out in faith, hope, or love. . . .

Now I think I will simply go to bed and forget my homework altogether. I am shot for an evening. :) Tomorrow is my visit to the dentist . . .

My notes are short and fragmented because I am trying to get ready for work, but you know how it is when you think too much . . . .

Well, I was pouring out a bowl of cereal and thinking about how much I appreciate your friendship. God knew exactly what I needed, even though I did not, and he put you there before me . . . so kind and considerate, so mentally stimulating, so humorous! You are just what the great physician ordered! Thank you for ministering to me. I praise Him for the gift of your friendship.

Now I really must be going.

One more thing myself on light versus darkness. I couldn’t remember where I had written it, but I findly found an old article I had written that contained this paragraph:

Do you want to get well? Then you must face the darkness before you can enter the light; the only way to face the darkness is with the light. Light is energy and aggressively displaces darkness, obliterating it, rendering it obsolete. The light transforms the very darkness, bringing it to life, for the darkness is nothing more than the absence of energy. This is why the light is infinitely superior to the darkness; this is why we can confidentially conclude that God will win in the end. It could be no other way.

Again, an analogy from the physical exposing a great truth about the spiritual:

Good and evil are not opposites—certainly not equal and opposite. Evil is merely a “parasite” or perversion of the good; good can exist by itself, evil cannot exist apart from the good, for it owes its very existence to the good. A murder depends on life to be the murder that it is, yet it cannot give life. Light is the presence of energy, darkness is merely the absence of light. Reality does not depend on belief to exist: believe it or don’t, it will still continue to exist regardless. A lie’s power, however, exists only within the mind of the deceived and promptly disappears once the truth is learned.

God is the God over all: as we mentioned in Sunday School recently, He is God over a world that is both falling apart and holy, in rebellion yet redeemed, a world where the most mundane details are as much of God as the most spiritual ideals. Everything that exists came from God; everything is relative to and contingent upon Him. Because everything that is came from God, even the life and freedom of choice that makes evil possible come from God: otherwise it would have no existence in the first place to call evil or good. . . . . .

Mankind can only create from that which is already created, and everything God created is good because God is the epitome of goodness. To speak of goodness apart from God is a non sequitur: it is like trying to imagine rain without the water droplets. No, God, the epitome of goodness, has created a creation capable of choosing between good and evil. If it chooses the evil, it must pervert the good: that is, it must take what is (which is good) and attempt to destroy it or use it against its intended purposes. Yet is it possible to take anything that is good and not end up with something that has a gleam of its goodness left here or a sparkle of it still left there? Is it possible to completely cover uncreated light without a faint glimmer still radiating from under the rim? Is it possible to remove all traces of the original design with which the Creator imbued matter, or, as I am turning over in my mind in speculation, is it impossible to totally get away from goodness? Does not even the foundation of evil rest on goodness; does it not require the hand that gently feeds it in order to be able to bite that hand? Would it not die if that hand were removed?

Now then, what do you think of light and darkness now? Not that you haven’t already thought of such things, but there is something about reinforcement and counter-perspective . . . It is as the another paragraph from the article mentioned at the opening of this letter says:

There are many levels of truth in what I have written. Depending on your own current level of understanding, you may leave this article with several layers of truth, each one deeper than the next. That is the strange thing about truth. It can be perceived on many levels, yet it still remains the truth, no matter what level it comes at you from, no matter what level you receive it on . . .

This concept is not to exalt myself as all-knowing (it could sound arrogant, though it was not intended to be and I don’t think it is in context of the larger article), but simply expresses a fact of the universe. The more deeply we meditate on ideas and concepts, the richer they become. Such is the case with darkness and light, which we could discuss fruitfully for years to come without ever completely exhausting the implications of such metaphorical parallels.

By the way, glad to hear my words minister to you. I mean, I already know I am a wonderful guy and all that— :p —but I am not always so sure that what I write speaks to people and brings them closer to God. We do so underestimate ourselves at times, do we not? (And likely overestimate ourselves at others.) ;) It always comes back to balance.